As per our call at that time, the moment the Egyptian Army was deployed on the street, marked the fall of the current Regime. The success of the Revolution is now a question of degree only.

The most telling demonstration of the current situation on Saturday evening in Egypt, is that a pitched battle with gunfire has been waged all day between protesters trying to destroy the Interior Ministry and the Regime thugs defending –yet the Army has not intervened to stop the clashes or defend the Ministry.

That is ominous for the Presidency, and an indication of the degree to which the military command is constrained in action.

The deployment of the army was a necessary step to prevent the destruction of cities after the Regime had blinked and voluntarily withdrew it’s heavily pressured police forces.

But now that the army are on the streets, there is a street level common security purpose emerging between individual army units and a people hostile to the regime.

It is now impossible, de facto, for the army command to instruct the officer corps to enforce a solution unacceptable to the soldiers and people on the street. That’s the Revolution’s trump card.

The tentativeness of the army command is seen in the lack of a properly coherent army security response. More an army presence than an army purpose.

Meanwhile this policing and political vacuum is a ticking clock of social collapse. Therefore the army is a mere stopgap ‘police’ presence until a mechanism can be found to get some kind of policing re-established.
And there’s the problem. Police would be attacked if deployed right now. So only a political solution with broad support would be enough to give legitimacy to a reconstituted police force.

With measurable social, institutional collapse happening already, minds are going to become very focused and pressure for a solution to emerge within 48 hrs is extremely high.

So what next?

The Regime figures are in a bubble, thinking that old rules apply. So they cannot solve this themselves.
But the elite and upper echelon in the army and civil service may soon realize that the smart move would be for the men in grey suits to go to Mubarak and hand him a plane ticket or a brochure for a retirement home.

The alternative is a lose-lose scenario for Egypt.

And as the organic osmosis of political currents now snake through the civil and military upper echelons in Egypt and the US, the attractions of the solution where Mubarak declares he is handing over all presidential powers to the Vice President should become apparent to all.

A workable political solution will emerge which has grassroots and establishment participation. Inclusiveness will be essential to solve the economic problems.

However, the US will be holding out for the maintenance of pseudo-legitimate existing political institutions and rules. They want to try prevent precedent becoming established whereby a hasty exit by the dictator is the natural solution to these Arab uprisings.

The US is playing that long game, because it expects to be in this type of situation again.